This event is no longer on sale online. Tickets will be available for purchase at the will-call table 45 minutes before the event begins.

Description

Leslie Umberger

Born a slave on an Alabama plantation and 12 years old at the end of the Civil War, Bill Traylor worked as a farm laborer for more than 60 years. Alone in retirement in segregated Montgomery, he discovered art and his creative voice without instruction or guidance, eventually creating more than 1,000 unique pieces of art. Leslie Umberger, curator of folk and self-taught art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, collected more than 205 of these works —many never before published—in Between Worlds, a carefully researched visual record of Traylor’s depictions of slavery, a life of work, and the rise of African American culture. Umberger is also the organizer of a Smithsonian retrospective of this work.